Maple Leafs' O'Reilly scores first three goals for new team in old Buffalo home

Ryan O'Reilly clearly has a flair for the dramatic.

The newly acquired Maple Leafs centre scored his first two goals for Toronto in rapid-fire fashion on Tuesday in a city where he's not exactly beloved -- and then added an empty-netter for a hat trick.

O'Reilly scored the two fastest goals by a Leafs player this season, notching them 37 seconds apart in the first period in Buffalo against the Sabres -- with thousands of Toronto fans in attendance. The goals put Toronto up 2-0.

O'Reilly then completed the hat trick into an empty net with 1:10 left to give the Leafs a 6-3 lead.

It marks O'Reilly's third game with Toronto since he was acquired in a trade with the Blues last week.

A former Sabre, O'Reilly was traded to the St. Louis Blues in July 2018 in the deal that landed Buffalo current star forward Tage Thompson.

O'Reilly rubbed some Sabres fans the wrong way months earlier when he said he lost some of his love for the game and added the team adopted a mindset of "being OK with losing" following another lost season for the franchise.

One year after the trade, of course, O'Reilly led the Blues to the Stanley Cup.

However, the sting of that has eased for Sabres fans as Thompson has developed into a star.

O'Reilly, meanwhile, got to experience the fun of a Toronto-Buffalo game in Western New York for the first time.

Traditionally, Toronto fans flood the arena and Tuesday was no exception -- as it was the first time most Canadians could cross the border with no restrictions to watch the Leafs since before the pandemic.

O'Reilly is the centre on Toronto's second line with Mitch Marner and John Tavares on his wings. They both recorded assists on each of O'Reilly's first two goals before Tavares put Toronto 3-0 on a Marner goal.